The thoughts and experiences of a man who enjoys challenging arts, unplanned wanderings and intelligent conversations.

12 April 2014

Brainstorm, the art of Bryan Talbort at The Muse gallery

I have been a fan of Bryan Talbot's work for quite a few years now so I was always going to be interested in an exhibition of his art, even more so when it was reasonably close to home in Ladbroke Grove.

The only problem was finding out about it. Luckily I read the Forbidden Planet blog on the penultimate day of the exhibition and so was able to see it just before it closed.

Bryan had been there for the opening night and is pictured here between two pictures of Nemesis the Warlock from 2000AD.

There were samples of Bryan's work from across his career and I was again drawn to The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and I might just have bought this page had not somebody beaten me to it. It carries the menace of a Nuremberg Rally plus the detail of a fine artist.

I came close to buying another page a couple of years ago. I spoke to Bryan about it at one of his signings (I've been to several) and he told me then that it had been sold just a couple of days previously.

Oh well, I'll just have to carry on buying the books and I've already got two by Bryan on this year's Christmas List, Arkwright Integral, due in October, which reprints the two Luther Arkwright novels in A4 hardback, and Grandville Noel, the fourth book in the series due out in November. I won't have to wait that long to get Sally Heathcote, Suffragette.

The best part about the exhibition was seeing the art from the various projects side-by-side to compare and contrast the styles. There were a lot of differences between them. I am hardly an expert on this but some looked like soft pencils, some thick felt-pen and some watercolour washes. That was testament, if further testament were needed, to Bryan's skill.

It was only a small exhibition but the scope of the work more than made up for that and it got me even more excited than I already was for his next books.